بِسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيم

Salam Alaykum

All the posts you may see on this site are basically notes taken from Islamic books and occasionally from audio recordings or other relevant material.

Even though the notes may be helpful in many cases, they should not to be taken as decisive in all cases, since there may be doubts and strange things written herein (in this sense then, most of the notes are of a preliminary nature until qualified scholars sift through them and point out any mistakes).

The situation mentioned above is due to a number of things: First of all, I am after all a lay Muslim, and this condition does put a barrier between me and the access to formal Islamic scholarship, even if I have full access to the books and good command of the languages in question. Insha Allah at some point in my life I will pursue formal Islamic studies, but until this happens and the entire course is complete, this first disclaimer must be kept in mind.

Coming to the books and works themselves, one of the issues to be considered is that many of the notes are from Arabic books and there may be some confusion about what is being said, since the level of Arabic is sometimes difficult to decipher with respect to the finer details of Islamic theology, and studies of Qur’an and Usool. Also, there are times when strange things are written in books (whether Arabic or English language books) and they are not corrected by the publisher, and it may not be possible to assess or correct what has been included in such books except after a long time and a lot of effort, something that may not be available to us for all problematic statements. Insha Allah we will eventually take on board knowledgeable people who have completed a formal traditional ‘Aalim course, but until that time (and beyond) our readers must remember that mistakes may creep into the notes we write.

Also, note that even though the link to the notes of a book may remain the same, changes will occur to such notes while the book is being read, and sometimes even after the books is read in order to fill some lacunae in the notes. Finally, I will try to comment on the topics as they come up in my readings, but if they appear again in another work, this may be considered a product of my “stream of consciousness” method for commenting on these works; and I believe this method is the best, at least for me, to convey what I believe to be the salient and important points in the works I am dealing with.   

A last issue that may be seen in some of the notes is that in many cases these notes may merely be repetitions of what the original author is saying (akin to class notes), but Insha Allah I will slowly try to provide some more material on the matters originally discussed by the author, if Allah bestows the chance for me to gain additional knowledge on the matters being discussed in such works.  So please remember all of these points as you read the note in this site.